Government's response to floods defended

The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, has defended the Government's response to the floods but acknowledged that emergency planning has not been entirely adequate.

Speaking after EU environment ministers had attempted to agree a common approach to climate change on Tuesday, he said the events of the past few days highlighted the importance of taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are believed to cause global warming.

"Emergency planning has worked reasonably well as far as it goes. It is just the sheer scale of what has happened that has caused the major difficulties."

Mr Dempsey said the link between pollution and climate change was now so clear that the need for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was indisputable. But he rejected calls for a Europe-wide carbon tax on the grounds that taxation must remain the preserve of the member-states.

The EU Energy Commissioner, Ms Loyola de Palacio, said energy policy should be taken out of the hands of individual memberstates and determined at a European level. Until that was possible, governments should seek to co-ordinate their policies as closely as possible.

"What we must do as soon as possible is to make closer policies on energy issues within the 15 member-states, bearing in mind that at the end what we need is to have a communitarisation of energy policy," she said.